Great Basin Fire Potential Briefing: May 28, 2026

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:01]Good morning. This is the Great Basin Fire potential briefing for Thursday, May 28th, 2026.

[00:00:08]Testing out some new versions of our briefing format. Uh we're probably or possibly going to go to this one here, but have a look and see what you think.

[00:00:16]Leave a comment in the comments section if you can.

[00:00:21]Okay, looking at our overall uh big picture, we have gusty winds, low humidity today across much of Utah, eastern Nevada. uh south central Idaho and that area of wind's going to shrink in both area and magnitude back towards southeast uh turn areas of Utah on Friday. Then uh we start transitioning to a warmer and drier weather pattern across the entire region uh next week.

[00:00:46]Fuels are kind of complicated. Uh there's been some steady drying with these dry, breezy conditions in eastern areas, but um western and uh northern areas of Idaho, much of Nevada uh had quite a bit of uh precipitation. Uh nothing really heavy in one particular day, but uh for several days already, higher humidity and showers, and then everything's going to start drying out again. So, let's break it down day by day and our significant impacts. Then you see uh the wetness over in the west with uh widespread showers. Um but it hits kind of a drier wall right near the Utah Nevada border. That's where we have those gusty winds of 30 to 45 mph across many areas. Continuing to dry out.

[00:01:28]Really worried about some of the lightning we had in parts of uh uh central and eastern Utah the last couple of days. It did come with some moisture, but that has been drying out steadily yesterday and will do so again today. So wouldn't be surprised start seeing some holdovers, but fortunately um that low pressure area causing the wetness is going to spread eastwards and spread a lot of shower activity across much of the Great Basin. The one exception will be across the southeastern corner where dry, windy conditions will continue for one more day. That entire weather system finally moves on on Saturday. We have no significant impacts at all. We'll see uh near normal temperatures, maybe a little cooler than normal in northern areas before we start heating up over the weekend. Over the past 24 hours, we did have quite a bit of shower activity across the west. A lot of areas picked up a tenth to quarter inch of precipitation, some pockets over a half inch. Uh there was some lightning with it of course, but it was wet and not including yesterday. The last seven days continue to show some pretty good rain amounts. A/ inch or higher. We see the green quarter inch or higher. We see the dark blues across many western and northern areas. And some of the stuff in Utah was uh from several days ago. Um initial attack has slowed down quite a bit. We've had uh just five fires uh averaging about an acre each. But a lot of activity over the past week, including some large fires where you see these open circles. Uh the flash drought monitor for the last couple of months shows our most extreme conditions in southern and central areas.

[00:03:02]And the 10-hour fuels um will be driest uh across uh the southern areas today.

[00:03:09]Any finer fuels? And breaking it down a little bit more um across the Arizona strip and far southern Utah, we do see that um currently where my cursor is here, we have uh we're probably in the 87th percentile, but we'll be going up quite a bit over the next 7 days uh as we get into a warmer and drier pattern.

[00:03:29]We're also going to have some wind there over the next day or two. That's some of a concern. And up in South Central Idaho, we have that large fire and the summit incident up there. Um we are currently right at the 90th percentile.

[00:03:42]That'll take a nose dive as showers move across there in the next 36 hours before we start bouncing back up um over the weekend. So look at a large scale weather picture. There's that low pressure area on Thursday uh over South Central California. uh wrapping up lots of moisture, but there's that dry wedge of air in that orange and some strong gusty winds ahead of it. Uh we do have a high risk for wind in some of our driest areas and then a moderate risk for brown here in the 7-day uh for today and that's basically due to the fact that there was some rainfall in the last uh 2 or 3 days. Um hasn't been much initial attack there, but we will be drying things out. We could start seeing recent lightning holdovers popping up. Now, this low pressure area does track uh eastwards into central areas of the Great Basin on Friday. Uh we will have elevated moderate risk for winds, but at this point, we're not high- risking it.

[00:04:32]But there'll be gusts approaching 35 mph down there as well. Um and then looking at uh Saturday, that low finally moves out. Uh we moisten things up a little bit across the region. Map doesn't look too bad on Saturday. Um and then the wind and humidity, we see those strong gusty winds here. are some of these purple areas gusting into the mid to upper 40s. You can see where the humidity is most critical, lowest in eastern areas and where it's highest in the west. Now, we see on Friday those winds really start to diminish and shrink an area down towards the far eastern and southeastern parts of Utah with the humidity still in the low to mid teens, but a significant rise in humidity elsewhere across the western uh twothirds of Utah, much of Nevada and Idaho. And then on Saturday, uh, still some breezy conditions, not really that much. Where we have some of these winds here in the Snake River plane, humidity is, uh, somewhere between, uh, 25 and, uh, 30 35%. So, not a not a real significant impact there. Uh, precipitation each day, we see it across the western Great Basin uh, today, spreading eastwards on Friday, and still some lingering precipitation eastern areas on Saturday. Then a big pattern change days 4 through 7. That low finally is well up into the north. We see a big dry air mass moving in as high pressure from uh the Pacific starts nudging in. We start getting warmer and drier. And you can see that on the 7-day we start to um see uh a lot of a kind of a significant drying pattern um as we go through uh early next week and uh especially across southern eastern areas that would have received the least amount of precipitation with this system. Um the winds, there'll be some gusty winds up north, but the humidity will start drying, but the fuels there are quite moist. Otherwise, winds will be slackening off early next week. You notice the humidity nose dive starts getting drier and that drier air starts pushing further northwards.

[00:06:29]Precipitation really starts tapering off and some things up on the 7-day outlook.

[00:06:34]You can see our highest risk for wind uh and low humidity is today southern eastern areas, but also expanding this moderate risk in the brown. a small concern of wind and low humidity in this brown area here in southeastern Utah and then uh you know fairly benign conditions. We've moistened up quite a bit the last couple of days and then we go into next week significant warming and drying trend. You see that by the middle of next week a lot of areas even in Nevada start going back into the yellow um and even drier as head further to the east and the uh 6 to 10 day outlook much above normal temperatures uh probabilities and a drying trend in that 6 to 10 day outlook also. All right, thanks. Have a great day. Leave any comments in the comments section.

[00:07:17]Appreciate it. This is a format a little different from yesterday's format.

[00:07:20]Always want to hear your feedback. Have a great day.